Has anyone taken the new vampirism for a spin?

Scaling with seems interesting to me, but even with the changes, is it manageable when you can't eat?

 

OK, just skimmed dredmorpedia, and this seems REALLY good. Can you say "Level 5 Vegan gives 4 health regen"? Can you say "necromantic resist"? Can you say "Necronomiconomics Gish"?
Also batty form now can summon more bat buddies to distract your foes while you flee. And Corpse Drain heals 1.2 of your magic power (which seems hideously overpowered and probably a bug? but really nice). And lots of other stuff that makes me really want to take it, basically. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

 

Hmmm...Considering minor blood debt, blood debt and curse of weakness all debuff regen and, worse of all, they stack, I'm not so sure tier 1 vampirism is so hot for necronomiconomics right now, even if you can offset it with vegan (which I doubt). You'll probably only see 2-3 hp recovery per hit, which is awful. Fortunately corpse drain works well right now (although I'm suspicious dredmorpedia's numbers are off, at level 2 with 7 magic power I'm healing 2HP tops, and it varies) the necro resist is golden, but it was there from last patch.

I guess it's still good for a necro gish, but I hate having a useless skill in my builds, especially a tier 1 skill.

EDIT: The new voice comment is awesome, though.

 

Vegan? Most of vampirism gains is based off hitting animals, something you can't do as vegan, so I don't see that as beneficial.
Right now my vegan character on GRPD regenerates 1 Per turn and an additional 1 per turn if I have eaten something. With the bonus life from Vegan, and potentially 2 a turn in sticky situations, and working no matter what I am fighting (as opposed to animals, demons, other). It still seems like a no brainer because if things get difficult, i can run away and heal where I wouldn't as a vampire.

But the Batty form with distraction seems awesome for escaping. Too bad I can't heal while escaping. Mythologically, i thought vampires could heal from wounds without drinking blood.

 

Yup. Mythologically, any injuries short of staking and/or beheading it and stuffing its mouth with garlic can be recovered from by a vampire, but IIRC it MUST rest in its coffin to heal them. Or I think the coffin thing was just for major injuries. Anyway they'll be badly weakened even if they're still alive and their natural regen can be sometimes messed up if they're too weak (read: been pulverised bad, especially set on fire.) They're also pretty much helpless when resting in a coffin unless you look directly into their eyes, at which point they'll charm you and you're then boned.

before I forget: a blessed wafer/holy water/garlic in their coffin will render them useless also, and those items will hurt the vampire if it comes back to its grave. They'll need a fresh tomb and earth from their death/burial site to rest again. The longer they go without rest also, the weaker they become.

 

I didn't notice any changes in the log, but I find it playing different now, and Dredmorpedia is crashing for me. Can someone please explain the changes?

 

Did you try refreshing? Otherwise I'm going to need more info.

Anyway, here's the main boost copypasted from Dredmorpedia (the new 'Vampirism Attack'):

Drains Life​

1 (+ 0.6 ×)​

Only affects Demons​

2​

Drains Life​

1 (+ 0.4 ×)​

Only affects Others​

3​

Drains Life​

2 (+ 1 ×)​

Only affects Animals​

 

Makes a roguiesh character with high sneak and and dodge/counter seem a good option, if you can secure enough regen. Tourist springs to mind, Vegan is sadly very antisynergic...
A vampire werediggle? Seeing as the drain is a proc, it should still work, right?
Communist is also good, since you get regen and more importantly healing, which is usually hard to come by for vamps.

 

Or you can try playing a vampire with Psionics, either way. If your character is supposed to be a warrior with Vampirism, he will find Psionics useful, and since we have a healing ability here to survive the first floor, yeah...

 

Isn't it kind of sad that healing is hard to come by for vamps when that is kind of the point of the whole tree? I mean the extra damage isn't trivial, but it sure isn't huge and farm more abilities do a better job of that, so that begs the question... why are we getting other healing for a tree based on healing.

 

Because usually characters use two forms of healing (out of: natural regeneration, food, potions, drain, wands, fungi), and Vampirism rids you of two of the above forms that are the easiest to access without a dedicated skill (natural regeneration and food).

 

I somehow completely missed this. Now I feel better about the terrible performance of my egyptian vampire pirate who had no choice but die on a level 2 zoo.

I had tried vampire werediggle before , with limited success. Time to experiment with a turtle emo vampire werediggle pirate build !

 

I have been finding that Vampire plus Shield Bearer and Master of Arms have been very effective. Not only do those abilities give high block chance, they also give .

Master of Arms can proc 10 and 4 in combat. Shield Bear can also proc 4 and has an activated ability for 4 . There has been time where my reaches 20+, more then enough to keep my vampire alive.

 

I've also had success with a similar build. I think I got to at least DL4 before I encountered a mysterious portal / wizardland / pocket dimension crashing bug.

 

Extremely successful build , overall. It's the most hybrid build I devised yet , so far at dungeon level 8 the unfocused stats do not diminish its combat prowess , killing things left and right without taking significant damage except for exotic minibosses.
I was somewhat lucky with found items (spirit tome is impossibly useful here) but very unlucky with Krong and shops , so that evens out.

Polearm stances help keep some weapon bonus in diggle form , either killing enemies faster (getting more use out of Swashbuckling) or keeping some distance. Angst Field keeps crowds of enemy casters quiet , so that you can comfortably fight them in melee and save the Commando ability for emergencies.

Most of those skill trees are short , so I do not advise swapping Emomancy and Werediggle for shorter ones on RotDG. You do gain XP fast , but the choices will narrow down quickly.

 

What the hell...
My build:
Vampirism
Master of Arms
Shield Bearer
Demonology
Inquisitor
Druid Magic

My stats on (character) level 2: (suit up active)

Look at that juicy AA and piercing resist.
Even a Lil' Deth could not touch me, and small batties deal 1 damage...
This is heavy for a vamp build.

 

I kind of think vampirism is overdue for a look-over anyway. It's a lot better than it was since good health drain isn't as restricted by archetype as before but the skill tree just doesn't have that much going for it.

Disclaimer: My avatar is my vampire OC by the way -- even my handle refers to her -- so I'm probably not the one to go to for an unbiased opinion here.

 

Overdue for a look over? It was just looked over, and changed significantly. And it has been a week since it was released, so there hasn't been ample time to really get a feel for what the tree is capable of. And not much going for it? Health and Mana return, an on-demand heal, a stun / anti-undead skill (which is necessary because you can't get your health return on undead), and an escape / summon ability? I think it has a lot going for it...

 

The on-demand heal last I checked is still only for 3 health on a dead enemy plus 1.2x magic power. That's quickly going to be outclassed, and it still has a 4 turn cooldown. Psychic vampire isn't as useful because wizard archetype characters rarely want to be in melee combat. Batty form doesn't really aid in most escaping and in fact gives enemies a free shot at you while you're transforming, though the summon thing helps a little. It's still outclassed by a mile by almost any teleport type skill, which is sad for a capstone skill.

I'm not saying the vampire skill tree is bad. You just have to consider that using skill points to acquire the above situational tricks means not using your skill points for level ups that give actual stat boosts. That generally means that putting a lot of points into vampirism either is gimping yourself in the early game when you most need keystone skills, or it'll be something you'll only pick up when the game is already mostly over. (since it's often better to cap out on skill trees you've already started)

So yeah, I stand by my point. Vampirism is still a work in progress and its viability is mostly for either novelty builds, or Necronomiconomics start-up builds.

 

I do still feel that we need more time to make decisions based on the new Vampirism's viability, but you do bring up good points. The heal being outclassed quickly being one. Perhaps changing it to a Corpse Feast and have it target every corpse in the 4/8 squares around the character for the heal.

I also don't think that having a skill that allows for "novelty" builds is a bad thing. Not every skill has to be Promethean Magic Egyptian Magic.